Tag Archives: Human rights

Belarus’ 100-year-old exiled government, which still fights to return democracy to “the last dictatorship of Europe”, takes stand against President Alexander Lukashenka’s exploitation of the European Games as a political event.

The media coverage of international sporting events is often colored by the fact that publications have spent a fortune buying TV rights to the events and sent journalists and photographers to cover them.

This year’s biggest Olympic sports event in Europe – the European Games in Minsk, which the state-owned Danish public service media company DR has purchased the broadcasting rights to – is no exception.

Last week’s Danish media coverage of the European games in Belarus, which is called “Europe’s last dictatorship”, has largely been influenced by the Danish reporters’ focus on the Danish athletes’ sporting ups and downs during the games.

On the other hand, criticism of the authoritarian host nation, which for 25 years has been ridden hard by president Alexander Lukashenka, a former Soviet military officer, has been absent in the media just as democracy is absent in Belarus, as Lukashenka’s critics believe.

On the occasion of Dziady, which since the 1980ies has become not only the traditional day when Belarusians commemorate their ancestors but also a memorial day for the victims of political repressions in Belarus, the Rada of the Belarusian Democratic Republic in Exile calls for all Belarusians to pay homage to the hundreds of thousands of our compatriots who became victims of repressions and social experiments under the foreign-imposed totalitarian Soviet regime, which dominated Belarus for the most part of the 20th century.